LOS ANGELES -- Seated behind Al Gore near the stage, Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland was fixated on the Democratic nominee's footwork.
''He would kind of drift backwards a step or two in his transitions,'' said the veteran who entered Congress with Gore in 1976. ''And then as he began another major point, he would step right into it toward the microphone. Kinda like a fighter; in fact, exactly like a fighter.''
Takes one to know one, but Gore's performance on the last night of a complicated (by definition for a sitting vice president) convention also met a modern challenge - to leaven the image of fighter for others with personal appeal. In today's political culture, voters want to welcome a candidate in their homes via television. Most people want to fall in like, if not in love.
The focus two weeks ago in Philadelphia was that for George W. Bush, all this was not business, it was personal. It was all about him, as personality and potential governing style.
For Al Gore as of early August - just getting ready to pick a vice presidential nominess and and prepare his own show - all this wasn't personal, it was business. As things unfolded here, it turned out that in Gore's planning and execution the personal and the business merged.
The way they merged surprised me.
In the several days preceding the Gore (as well as the Joe Lieberman) acceptance speeches, I heard from campaign officials about the critical importance of rhythm and speed as keys to a conversational tone that would get him into people's homes as a welcome (if temporary) guest, not as an intruding, traveling salesman.I reacted by putting aside what I had trouble following, by basically dismissing it as political consultant babble.
Was I wrong! From the fifth word of the speech, what I had been told but ignored somehow kicked in and made sense. The initial phrase - ''I speak tonight of gratitude'' - was anything but typical of Gore the vice president and stiff figure. In that role, each word would be fairly loud and come fairly slow.
But Gore the nominee went straight and quickly to the downbeat, to the word ''gratitude.'' More speed meant less volume; he was both conversational and got straight to the initial point that he was grateful.
In musical notation terms, Gore the vice president marked his rhetoric Lento - slow to the point of ponderous. In his case, the effect was usually artificially solemn, preachy.
The score for Gore the nominee on Thursday night was marked Allegro, not rapid but flowing the way a clear stream does. With modern sound systems, a speaker doesn't have to shout to be heard in a hall; and he shouldn't shout to be listened to in voters' homes. By maintaining a flow, Gore was able to make himself welcome. And that meant Gore could concentrate on content, business, issues, and message.
For the two-dimensional in mindset, Gore's laser-like focus on the concerns of working families is inevitably termed ''populist.'' It is not; it is progressive. There's a difference. Populism is anger; it is about retaliation on behalf of the downtrodden against the money-covered titans of commerce and politics; it is mostly about redistribution of wealth and power.
Progressivism is reform, working family, middle-class as well as working poor politics. As in the turn-of-20th century model (Teddy Roosevelt) for those leaving rural life for an industrial economy, it seeks a social contract for those (in Bill Clinton's phrase, who work hard and play by the rules) in the post-industrial economy, to help people in a confusing world where ''powerful forces and powerful interests stand in your way.'' Getting this right is in the country's interest, not simply the interest of one class.
The best clue was that after a specific thematic opening, Gore began an even more detailed discussion of national priorities with campaign finance reform. This was a steal from John McCain, who presented a cleansing of money politics as the key to accomplishing all his other goals.
Progressivism also has a darker side - not just preachy but moralistic in an intrusive, superior way. It reached its apogee in the absurdity of prohibition.
But these matters pale before the fact that Gore has accomplished the difficult task for a vice president of emerging. He's right that the people who count want to know the details, but Gore the vice president had trouble getting past the threshold to start that conversation. By being conversational, the nominee now has an attentive audience.
Thomas Oliphant is a Globe columnist.
